Bring Me to Life
by Soul of Immortality
Summary: A prelude story of Edward's birth into the Vampire world.


Reference: New Moon pg. 39-41, Breaking Dawn pg. 375-386

Twilight fanfic inspired by i_Bring Me to Life/i _by Evanescence

_i For almost ninety years I've walked among my kind, and yours… all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything, because you weren't alive yet./i  
__Edward Cullen__, __Twilight__, Chapter 14, p.304_

Life's end didn't feel so bad when it was fated to come. It's taken many already in its embrace, only the pure part, the soul leaving lifeless bodies behind so that those who still lived were reminded of what they had lost. I could almost see it searching, always searching for its next victim, and wondered when it would be my turn. I felt alone, I pretty much was alone. My father had already been a victim, and I seemed to be in line before my mother. Despite the pale faced doctor's plea she weakened herself trying desperately to nurse me back to health ignoring that she suffered the same as me. Sometimes she even came to my bedside just to stroke my hair, and my cheeks pleading for me to hold on, to stay out of death's reach.

I've heard that people have seen their lives flash before their eyes in times of near death, but the life I had dreamed of and now could never have was what flashed before mine. I saw myself in uniform, armed and on the attack ready to defend my country. I had dreamed so often of having that honor, to be a hero. Frightening as it was, the glory is what made it all worthwhile to any man. Or maybe they feared being a coward more than death it was hard to tell. My poor mother always dreaded the thought, and always prayed every night before dinner for this horrid war to end. She got her wish as she lay dying beside me; I had never been out there. I saw something else I would never get to do, find love. I couldn't see myself with anyone. I had never really thought about it before in health, it wasn't something I desired at this time in my life. But now that I never would my life all of a sudden seemed so short, empty, like I had not accomplished anything but wasting a body and breath. I saw myself, my face paled and wrinkled. I wore glasses and walked slowly and with struggle; a cane was in one hand for support. The bronze had faded from my hair into a silver-gray like the moon in the night sky. Maybe I would have a beard to match. I sat alone on a porch swing, reading a book.

There were so many people around my mother and I; also waiting in line for death to take them. I wondered what they all thought about as they traveled down the one way dead end road, did they fear leaving this earth or did they see it as a blessing, a way out? I occupied myself by looking at their expressions and guessing their thoughts. The first to catch my attention was an older gentleman; most being struck by the influenza were young, I was seventeen, and middle aged around the forties was the oldest. So he seemed to have been dealt a bad hand. His hair was as white as snow, and he had light brown eyes. He sighed a lot through his heavy breathing.

i_I knew it was my time, but I never imagined going like this./i _I imagined hearing his mind say. There was a long black haired woman asleep, her hands lay across her chest and her mouth hung slightly open.

_i Soon I'll be free. Free from this world full of pain and anger, and sin/i, _were the thoughts that accompanied her face as she dreamed. Another, middle aged woman possibly the same as my mother looked pale and almost lifeless, but from her wandering sad eyes I was almost certain that she did not think of herself at all, but rather worried that her son would not return home from the war.

i_Please God, not him, please keep him safe, he must live/i. _I could hear what her thoughts must be so vividly.

I could feel death watching me, coming closer and closer to me as I grew very hot and my breathing labored. Day by day my body had shut down more and more. I knew he was there, I saw the pale face blurred as he came to my bedside and watched me. I couldn't make out his features, I was slipping into unconsciousness. My mother took a turn for the worst and the kind pale faced Dr. Cullen had taken a fondness to her. He was like a friend, and had cared for both of us well, but this epidemic was beyond his power. He seemed to know that all he could do now was watch us both die. I could just barely imagine the defeat in his thoughts; not in words as my mind was shutting down but rather in an empathic way.

I felt like I was drowning. I could taste salt water coming up in my throat, and filling my lungs. I could hardly breathe. I kicked and threw my arms around but I couldn't pull my body up to the surface of the water. I could still, barely see the blurred silhouette of Dr. Cullen. It was impossible to know whether I was dreaming, or delirious. I was probably slipping into a coma considering. The fever was raging; I was very hot although I felt like I should have been freezing. I couldn't make out his words if he was saying anything, the world was mostly silent but faint distinct sounds wafting through the air around me, voices? I was too far out of reality to tell, or care. The salt stung my eyes with every blink until I had to close them. I felt numb, like I could no longer move, and began to fall slowly farther and farther down. There was nothing but darkness, and I felt like I didn't exist anymore, I had no body or being. I couldn't feel anything. I was afraid, not of death as much as that there was something missing. There was this empty space inside me, and I would never find what belonged there. That was what scared me. I don't think anyone afraid of dying was truly afraid of death itself, but rather time, to run out of it before you are ready. That is why the elderly are usually never afraid; it's easy for them to know that their time is short anyway.

All of a sudden I could feel a pull upward. It was nothing I was doing, I felt no different than I had a few seconds ago. I was confused and considering that I was dying, I was not sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. But was death really a bad thing? The thing I had saw always searching for its next victim as I lie in my own death bed didn't look like a monster. All of its victims here were suffering as the disease drowned the city, but did death really choose how it took us? Death doesn't cause disease, disease causes death. I felt almost peaceful, I didn't have any idea how this was happening, but I could almost feel someone or something carrying me up. I couldn't help having just a spark of hope as I ascended higher and higher, closer to the surface. Whatever was carrying me, it made me anxious but unafraid. I tried to open my eyes; I wanted to see what was happening, what was carrying me up. But my eyes would not open; I couldn't find the light in all the darkness. But I did all of a sudden hear something:

_i Save him!/i_ I was sure it had been my mother's gentle, caring, and now very horse voice. It was only an echoed whisper in my dark prison, but it was unmistakable. My body then broke the surface of the water. I was sure because I felt lighter, and finally I could see light against my eyelids. I didn't know where I was or where the light came from but it didn't matter. I definitely knew now that someone was carrying me, I could feel a warm gentle embrace cradling my limp body, and there was a heartbeat against my temple. I could hear the gentle sound of waves crashing and the slow even breathing of my savior. I was becoming aware and I knew that I was not back at the hospital. I felt too peaceful and light to be recovering, and in this time and during this epidemic, no one was recovering.

My savior gently laid me down, and I could feel a hand stroke my forehead and slide down my cheek. The head fell against my chest for few seconds, the hair was long I felt it drop against my body like a curtain. Then I felt a pushing against my chest, both the hands pumping against my windpipe trying to help me breathe. The feeling of the fluid in my lungs began to subside.

"Edward?" I heard, but I didn't know the voice. It was almost a whisper, soft and beautiful. She then brought her lips down, I could feel her breath on my skin, and her hair fall against my neck, and pressed them against mine. Her lips felt soft and warm, and wonderful. She exhaled into me, and my lungs felt clear and strong.

"Edward?" She called again and finally I could open my eyes. She was staring down at me with the most beautiful chocolate-brown eyes I'd ever seen. Her hair was long and dark, a huge contrast to her very light skin except for where red slightly shaded her cheeks. She sat beside me in a powder blue dress, and tenderly placed a hand on my cheek and smiled at me. I smiled back at her; she was so beautiful like nothing I'd ever seen before. I wondered what she was thinking, but her face didn't tell me much except that she seemed glad to see me. Her smile made her whole face glow brighter than the moon, and being near her I felt alive. I sat up, and ran the back of my fingers gently along her cheek bone. She closed her eyes and sighed, letting her head tilt bashfully as her cheeks became redder.

"Are you an angel?" I spoke to her for the first time. She leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder.

"If you stay, I don't need heaven." She replied, and I wrapped my arms tightly around her and held her close to me. I ran my hands through her long hair, and down her back. Every part of her felt so good and I never wanted to let her go. I wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling. After a few minutes she lifted her head from my shoulder and looked into my eyes. Those Chocolate brown eyes were full of wonder, and startlingly full of fear and worry. She looked like she wanted to cry.

"What is it? What's wrong?" I asked gently. I didn't like seeing her like this; I wanted to make whatever it was go away. She leaned in and pressed her lips against mine. Then laced her hands in my hair and laid me slowly back down on the ground. I weaved one hand through her hair and pressed her close against me with the other as I kissed her passionately.

i_You must! You must do everything in __**your**__ power. What the others can not do. That is what you must do for my Edward./i_

I could hear her breathing increase as I moved from her lips to her red cheeks, down her neck, my hand toying with the strap of her powder blue dress. Touching her I felt like I could live forever. She raised her head, breaking my concentration, and stared down at me into my eyes. But this time those eyes were glowing with hope, and love. I took her face gently in my hands, and she smiled wide and beautiful. Her heart crashed against my chest, and she breathed unevenly, anxiously. Then she was kissing me again, crushing her lips against my temple, my cheek bone, and working her way down as she massaged her hands through my hair like she was holding on to me for dear life.

i_I'm sorry. Everything will be alright. I promise/i. _A male whisper all of a sudden wafted right next to my ear. I believed it, I couldn't help it; I was under her spell so I had to believe the whisper.

"Can I keep you?" I asked in a whisper as her lips reached mine and I crushed my lips with hers in response. I never wanted to lose her. Suddenly I felt like I was swimming in a cold sweat, and my breathing became hard. The passion had stopped; she was hovering over me, staring down at me again.

She stroked my cheek and I screamed out at the top of my lungs. Something sharp had suddenly dug into my neck, and the sky above me begun to turn dark. There was a fierce heat growing in my body, it begun bearable, but became hotter and more agonizing as my heart pumped it rapidly through my veins. The skies became darker still, not just night and day darker, or stormy cloud darker, but everything around me was being covered in blackness. My chocolate-brown eyed girl kept watching me as it took her. Blackness swirled around her beautiful face above me and her image was disappearing.

"NO!" I shouted sending my arm out despite it becoming numb and limp, to reach for her. I couldn't lose her. She didn't fight it though; she just kept looking down at me sympathetically as she became more and more blurry and faded.

I couldn't begin to think of anything else in the world that could put a human being through so much agonizing pain and suffering. I was horrendously on fire, I felt like my heart was going to push itself through my ribs and out of my chest, and I wanted desperately to save it the trouble, to just rip it out. I was alone now, and all of a sudden I was scared not of dying, but of living. I reached out metaphorically because I couldn't feel my body to move my arms to the blackness, summoning it closer and closer like a helpless infant wordlessly summoning for it's mother's arms and her comfort. I wanted it to take me where ever it had taken my chocolate-brown eyed girl. The way she made me feel, I could understand why life was worth it, and why people were so afraid when theirs was over. Nothing else mattered to me anymore but being near that girl, touching her, holding her in my arms, and protecting her. It was so quick, I was buried in the blackness in the blink of an eye, and I knew that she was gone forever. There was nothing but…nothing. I felt like I was in a state of non-existence, except the fiery pain was still there. The fire was nothing compared to the agony that I felt from losing her. If I couldn't see her again I wanted to die, I wanted to kill myself rather than live another second in this agony. The illness that took so many in Chicago was peaceful and comforting compared to this. Usually from what I saw patients just slipped into unconsciousness and never came out. Even the brave men who were being killed defending our country in the war, getting their organs blown out couldn't be suffering this much. Why was I the only one feeling this endless pain, why did it choose me and no one else?

Once you are dead you don't really need time. I had not had any sense of time for a while. I had no idea how many hours, days, weeks, or years had passed me by, but everything started to change, something strange was happening. Actually a lot of strange things were happening all at once. First of all I became aware of time again, which was how I knew I was not dead. Then not only did I begin to feel my body again, so I could move my limbs but I could feel my body becoming stronger. The fire was still there and had not shrunk at all, but somehow I found my thoughts becoming clearer so I was able to concentrate away from it. I could hear my low even breathes vividly. None of this made any sense, then again what about this experience did? My mind began to explore something as it got clearer and more alert; maybe I was being reincarnated. It made some sense especially when considering the dramatic change in my condition, I was dying and now I was getting stronger possibly because I was settling into a new life. It would explain the blackness, and why I had felt so helpless. But then the fire, and more importantly the fact that I was still feeling it and it was just as painful even while I was getting stronger didn't fit with the idea.

It seemed like an ironic thought when all of a sudden my heart took off at an inhuman speed, to the point where it vibrated against my ribs causing the fire to grip and constrict my chest. Every breath was hard and painful, I could feel my chest heaving and my heart felt like a bomb that was going to explode at any moment. I had that agonizing feeling again of wanting to rip my heart from my chest and just die as quickly as possible. Obviously anyone who knows what death feels like can't tell the tale, but I never imagined that feeling stronger was a part of dying. But I knew for sure that these were my last moments of life, they had to be no heart can survive at this rate it was like a speed that didn't exist yet, like the speed of thunder and lightning that came before you could even give it a thought. The lightning had struck, and I waited now for the thunder. I could almost hear the booming crash my heart would make when it exploded, and how I would not even have a chance to think before it happened to give the world and life a last thought and wonder where I would go. I couldn't help being so creative and comparative when considering this despite where I was, that was how clear my mind was working now. It almost came up with this stuff automatically without consulting me. It was oddly comforting in the terrifying moment when my heart surprised me; It did not explode at all but rather almost skidded to a stop, sputtered about three last hard thumps and then didn't move anymore. For some reason it was an impulse to wait for it to start again, but after what seemed like about two minutes, nothing. It was over, the pain, the agony, it was finally over. Nothing else but the freedom mattered…until I opened my eyes.

Everything before the fire had consumed me was all a blur, my mother her face unclear, lying in the hospital with an illness that should have killed me as it had so many others, raging war that I had craved to be a part of. These were all the memories I had; it was all more like a dream than memories, distant and in fragments. All I had now was the present, and a face I did not recognize; The pale white skin of a corpse, a breath that came and went, but a heart that did not move, and monstrous crimson red irises. And a burn in my throat, a thirst for something I had never thirsted for before. I was not the only one that was different now; there was a new side to Dr. Carlisle Cullen. I had never really known the guy before so I really didn't have an initial opinion of him except that he had a very kind and gentle bedside manner when he had taken care of my mother and me. He had just been a simple kindly doctor. But now I knew that behind his healing hand he had hid something, that he wasn't human.

"Wha…what did you do to me!?" I choked out but I did not recognize the voice that flowed so smoothly and velvety from my lips. It wasn't my voice. I had to double back a gaze at the mirror on the wall to check my identity. The pale monstrous eyed face that met my gaze for the second time was my face, but it wasn't.

I wanted to be angry with Dr. Cullen; he had kidnapped me from the morgue, brought me to his home and turned me into a walking corpse. I was like Frankenstein's monster because of him, but I could see in his face from the moment I had opened my eyes that he didn't enjoy this anymore than me. Then a memory flashed very vaguely in my mind: i_Save him!/i_ He told me he hadn't wanted to do what he did, the difficulty of it, but apparently I was worth it. As I had went through that complete hell I couldn't imagine that anything could be worse, but now I see thati _inflicting/i_ such agony possibly was. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to i_watch/i_ me suffer from what he had done. Especially without knowing what would happen, if he would get the desired results or if all my pain would be in vein. What about both?

I was afraid of myself and especially of my burning thirst; I knew what it was that I craved and it was repulsive and unholy. I was out of control, and disoriented, my body and my senses were different now, stronger and I had no idea how to use them or how to shut off the autopilot. Everything around me was so vivid; the smells, the sounds, and even the sights. Early nightfall didn't look very dark to me; it was like I could see through the darkness like a curtain. It was the perfect and smartest time of night to commit a sin. The city was almost empty, few roaming and quiet to the normal ear but I could hear every specific sound down to the footsteps of an insect. So naturally there was another unheard and deadly sound my new ears could hear clearly, the trigger for my monstrous insanity…a heartbeat. That was it, the burn in my throat pulsed with pleasure as I stood in the dark city unaffected by the bitter cold breeze listening and watching the lone figure of the young woman so innocent. There was nothing else in the world at that moment, the pleading doctor urging me to take control fell silent; I couldn't do it. I couldn't find any control within me, I wanted her too badly. The sound of her heart and her smell attracted me so strongly completely overriding my disgust of the idea. My pupils dilated as I went into hunter's mode, yet another new discovery, and launched myself at her at a speed no human would ever even consider existed and had her pinned to the ground in literally a second. I dug my teeth into her neck before she could scream and sucked like a nursing infant. I groaned with pleasure as I felt the warm blood pour down my aching throat, soothing the burn. It didn't take long for the burn of my thirst to be replaced with the ache of my heart at the realization of what I had done as I lifted my head and immediately became face to lifeless wide open face with my prey. I had just committed murder. Her blood was literally on my hands and I could feel it drip from my mouth and down my neck. I buried my shameful face in those blood soiled hands, sobbing except there was only the dry heaves of my breath and the sounds but not the tears that went with them. The doctor had said the beginning wasn't easy, but truly was any of it, any ofi_ this_!?/i All of a sudden I had to admire the man who had brought me into this life. Was it not the same vicious attack that turned me into this horrible beast? How did he do it? How was it not me drained of life on the ground instead of that woman?

She was not my last victim. My theory had not been completely incorrect; I had been re-born, an excruciating rebirth into a cursed half-life. Perhaps even a spawn of Satin. The sweet smell and the sound of the heart were too much for me especially since I had to walk among it all the time. It was like dropping a chunk of meat in front of a lion yet telling him he couldn't eat it--torture! But Carlisle was right, throughout the endless years the control did come; and with it something else, something unique. Carlisle didn't have to talk for me to know what he was thinking, I could hear it. With the guidance of the man who became a father to me I found that I could resist the human sent if I wanted to, or block it even. I didn't actually need to breathe, and when one doesn't breathe one can't smell. It didn't make things much easier, but when my thirst was satisfied by the local wildlife it was enough. And as I learned to block a human's sent, I learned to block their thoughts. As things started to fall into place as time passed I realized I was growing; from hideous newborn hell spawn, naive and undeveloped to mature, world's most dangerous predator. The hideousness was the same; just because I had learned made me no less of what I was and no less dangerous. Not long after Carlisle had taken me in, I had a mother again. Later came two more dying teenagers and two rouges. That was when my new life truly began, when I went from Edward Mason Jr. to Edward Cullen, part of a family again and I could resist the sent of human blood so that I could live as one to the possible extent.

By the end of the 20th century the only thing standing between me and true humanity besides my diet, and my sins was my frozen being. I was a 107 year old elderly man who should be dead. The average male human being was determined in these times to live to his seventies, and yet I still walked the earth in the shell of the seventeen year old war bound boy right at his peak of becoming a man that I should have died in beside my mother. That won't change…i_I/i_ won't ever change.

I was wrong. Everyone in this small town we dwelled in now had spoken of it…of her. A curtain of wavy dark hair highly contrasted pale white skin, almost matching mine…and her eyes…brown like chocolate. The moment I laid eyes on her in the lunch room I knew I had been wrong, because right then and there I changed. She was different; quite and bashful, she seemed smothered by the attention, lost even. She was surrounded by people and yet she seemed all alone. She was frustrating; I heard from her mind something I have never heard before in my impossible years, silence.

The rules were broken, her fragile being in danger every time the vivid sent I have never smelled before wafted around me tying me up viciously. But it didn't matter; she was always still there the next day in the same chair in biology beside me, the most beautiful creature to ever be created. Of all my sins she may have been my most unforgivable, my worst; a demon falling in love with an angel a sin no bible has ever thought of. But I needed her, I needed to love her and I would make sure I would never lose her. When she came into my life I felt a completion I had thought I had already had, like I had finally found something I had literally spent a lifetime searching for. I felt it every time I looked into those chocolate-brown eyes.

_i"You don't know how long I've waited for you."/i_

- Edward Cullen, Twilight Movie.


End file.
